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Why New Iran Sanctions Won't Work

By COLIN H. KAHL

December 10, 2013

The agreement struck between Iran and six world powers in Geneva last month freezes and modestly rolls back Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for a pause in imposing new international sanctions and a suspension of some existing penalties. The deal—designed to create a six-month window to negotiate a final, peaceful solution to the nuclear dispute—represents the most meaningful step to slow Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapons capability in more than a decade.

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Despite the historic nature of the agreement, it has met with considerable skepticism in the halls of Congress, where several senators have vowed to move forward with a fresh round of economic pressure on Iran. Because “Iran simply freezes its nuclear capabilities while we reduce the sanctions,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer declared, “this disproportionality … makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will join together and pass additional sanctions when we return in December.” Sen. Marco Rubio echoed this sentiment, calling on Congress to “increase sanctions until Iran completely abandons its enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.”

Sanctions proponents claim that new legislation would strengthen President Barack Obama’s hand and incentivize further Iranian concessions. Unfortunately, the opposite is more likely the case. New sanctions are dangerous and threaten to derail diplomacy, making a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear challenge more difficult to achieve.

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Some senators are pushing for the body to take up a version of crippling sanctions legislation passed by the House of Representatives last July as early as this week. Sens. Robert Menendez and Mark Kirk, two longtime sanctions hawks, are crafting legislation that would aim to sharply reduce remaining Iranian oil sales and impose additional limitations on Iranian financial transactions. The new penalties would have a “deferred trigger,” however, allowing Obama to suspend their application for six months if Iran implements the Geneva agreement and ultimately accepts more comprehensive constraints on its nuclear program.

Since no one—especially the Iranian regime—doubts that Congress will slap Tehran with additional penalties in six months time if it violates the terms set at Geneva or drags its feet in continuing negotiations, the value of stating the obvious now in legislation is unclear. But beyond being unnecessary, the move to enshrine the threat of future sanctions is unnecessarily provocative.

Even if new sanctions do not kick in immediately, passing such legislation now would most likely be viewed in Tehran as evidence of American bad faith. The Geneva Joint Plan of Action says that “the U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions” for the period of the agreement. Deferred congressional sanctions may not violate the letter of the agreement, but they most certainly violate its spirit, providing Iranian forces hoping to scuttle the next phase of diplomacy a prime opportunity to do so. For this reason, if Congress moves forward with such legislation, Iran’s moderate Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has warned that “[t]he entire deal is dead.”

The Revolutionary Guard and other Iranian hard-liners are deeply skeptical of the Geneva agreement and are keen to put the brakes on further accommodation. Capitalizing on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s long-standing suspicions that America “is not trustworthy, is self-important and breaks its promises,” hard-liners would use new sanctions legislation to demonstrate the unrelenting hostility of the “Great Satan” toward Iran. After all, they will argue, if Iranian concessions simply expose the Islamic Republic to greater Western pressure, what is the point? Iran’s pragmatic President Hassan Rouhani and his lead negotiator Zarif would be put on the defensive.